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Sunday, August 21, 2011

Some eBooks Cost More Than Hardcover Books–Here’s Why

I’ve always wondered why an e-Book would EVER cost more than the hardcover version of a book. You see this happen fairly often at Amazon and other places and it just didn’t make sense. The cost to print a book, bind it, ship it etc SHOULD add to the cost right?

Here’s one example, the new book “Inheritance” costs a penny more for the Kindle version compared to the hardcover:

Author, Nathon Bransford does an excellent job of explaining how this happens and why. Bransford explains that it appears Amazon (and others) are sometimes selling the hardcover as a loss leader – in other words they are losing money on the hardcover book. He also explains that publishers make a better cut from the hardcover copies than they do on the e-Books.

If you’ve ever wondered about this sort of thing and what it means when people say it’s the agency model versus the wholesale model of book-selling this is a must read.